sign in sign up
<<
Home , Airport Line (SEPTA), Commuter rail, Empire Corridor, InterCity, Keystone Corridor, Lincoln Service

Testimony of

William J. Flynn

Chief Executive Officer

National Railroad Passenger Corporation

Before the

United States House of Representatives

House CommiFee on Transportation & Infrastructure

SubcommiFee on Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials

When Unlimited Potential Meets Limited Resources: The Benefits and Challenges of High-Speed Rail and Emerging Rail Technologies

Thursday, May Q, RSRT TT:SS .m.

Rayburn House Office , Room RTQU

Amtrak

T MassachuseFs Avenue, N.W.

Washington, DC RSSST-TYST

(RSR) \SQ-]\T^ WHEN UNLIMITED POTENTIAL MEETS LIMITED RESOURCES: THE BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF HIGH-SPEED RAIL AND EMERGING RAIL TECHNOLOGIES

Introduction Good morning, Chairman Payne, Ranking Member Crawford, and Members of this SubcommiFee. Thank you for inviting me to testify at this hearing on behalf of . My name is William Flynn, and I am Amtrak’s Executive Officer.

I am particularly honored to be representing Amtrak at this hearing. It takes place six days after Pres- ident Biden traveled to to join us in celebrating Amtrak’s fiftieth anniversary. The American Jobs Plan he has proposed, which would provide $^S billion for Amtrak and high- speed and passenger rail, is an important first step in developing an improved passenger rail system that would enhance mobility by serving more communities; provide more frequent and more equitable service; generate significant economic benefits; and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Amtrak has accomplished a great deal since we began service on May T, T\UT with a mandate to transform unprofitable intercity passenger rail services operated by private railroads into “a modern, efficient intercity railroad passenger service”1 – with an initial appropriation of only $YS million. In thinking about where Amtrak, and high-speed rail service in North America have come over the past half century, the title of today’s hearing – “When Unlimited Potential Meets Limited Resources” – seems particularly apt.

The potential high-speed rail offered to revolutionize intercity was one of the major reasons Congress created Amtrak. The , the ’ first high-speed train, had begun service between City and in T\Q\, the year before the enactment of the Rail Passenger Service Act (RPSA) that established Amtrak. Many members of Congress who had experienced the Metroliner recognized the potential high-speed rail service had to, in the words of the RPSA, “provide fast and comfortable transportation between crowded urban areas2” throughout the United States.

What Is High-Speed Rail? When most Americans hear the words “high-speed rail,” what comes to mind are sleek bullet racing along newly-constructed rail lines on elevated viaducts. People who live in countries that have extensive high-speed rail networks would consider that definition of high-speed rail too narrow. In fact, “high-speed rail” encompasses several different types of services arranged

1 Rail Passenger Service Act of 3456, Pub. L. No. 43->3?, Sec. 363. 2 Ibid.

T along a continuum with generally fuzzy boundaries – and we need all of them in the United States if we are to realize high speed rail’s potential.

On one end of the continuum are the high-speed bullet trains, such as Japan’s or the extensive network of high-speed services China has developed over the past Tk years that operate on dedicated, custom built electrified rail lines at speeds that approach or exceed RSS mph. Their costs – both monetary and from the environmental impacts associated with their construction – can be justified in corridors with high travel volumes that are anchored by large cities; where existing rail lines are at capacity; where the distances are too long for anything other than very high speed service to be trip time competitive with flying; and/or where topographical characteristics such as mountains or other factors make it infeasible to significantly increase speeds on conventional rail lines. to Northern is the perfect example of this, which is why we need to build California High Speed Rail.

Next are high-speed corridors like Amtrak’s Boston-to-Washington (NEC) or Great Britain’s connecting and , where frequent high- speed trains operating at maximum speeds of TRk to TQS mph share electrified tracks with con- ventional intercity, commuter and freight trains. Both the NEC and the West Coast Main Line have high train densities and passenger volumes that have reached the point where development of dedicated high-speed rail lines over portions of their routes is necessary to accommodate grow- ing demand, and also to make rail more competitive with air travel for trips between their endpoint cities, which are approximately YSS miles apart. In the U.K., this has taken the form of the roughly $T]k billion HSR program, a series of newly-built, dedicated RRk mph lines that will interface with existing high-speed and conventional lines now under construction to connect London, the Midlands and Northern Britain.

The German system – Europe’s largest in terms of annual passengers – perhaps best represents the strategy of incremental development of high-speed rail. Starting with an extensive conven- tional network and a significant freight rail sector in place, Germany has strategically developed T^Q mph or higher high-speed segments to speed up certain city pair and international routes, while investing in conventional routes to bring them up to TSS to Tkk mph standards, to achieve overall trip times which are competitive with driving and flying. Thus, out of ’s roughly RT,SSS-mile network, only approximately T,]SS miles operate at speeds above Tkk mph as of RST^, yet the network serves as the primary mode of intercity travel for many. To put this in perspective, Germany is roughly half the size of but has a total network of equal size to Amtrak’s that provided TkT million intercity trips in RST\.

R While some definitions of high-speed rail use a higher threshold, the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of RSS^ (PRIIA) defines “high-speed rail” as “intercity passenger rail ser- vice that is reasonably expected to reach speeds of TTS mph.”3 Corridors with maximum speeds of TTS mph, four of which Amtrak operates, can offer faster trip times than driving and be very competitive with flying. Importantly, they can be developed at a much lower cost than faster corridors in markets where passenger demand would not justify the major capital investments, such as electrification and elimination of grade crossings, that are generally required to operate trains at higher speeds.

In nearly every nation, conventional rail service is the foundation for the development of success- ful high-speed rail service. Improvement or initiation of conventional rail service can occur much more quickly than construction of new high-speed rail lines, and can set the stage for high-speed rail service by building a ready market and existing passenger ridership that high-speed rail can tap when it arrives. Conventional rail service also feeds high-speed rail, providing connecting passengers and allowing high-speed services to be extended over conventional speed lines to ex- tend the reach of high-speed trunk lines.

The Path Ahead Instead of asking how we can develop high-speed rail lines, what we should be asking is how – to paraphrase Amtrak’s initial and current statutory goals – we can develop a modern, efficient, trip time competitive intercity passenger rail network throughout the United States that includes high-speed rail. If we focus myopically on the development of dedicated high-speed rail lines, or on new technologies that share most of their characteristics, we will not tap intercity passenger rail’s potential in the many locations around the nation where it can play a meaningful role. And we will continue to make liFle progress in addressing climate change on a national scale, as we will leave most of the country waiting at the station for the decades it typically takes to de- velop even one new high-speed line. For example, the UK’s HSR, for which planning began in earnest in RSTR, is not set to begin operation on its initial segment until as late as RS]S, with the full project not expected to be complete until RSYS. We also cannot ignore the fact that we al- ready have a high-speed railroad in the United States – the NEC between Washington and Boston – on which relatively modest investments could yield large improvements in trip times, ridership, economic impacts and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Much of the NEC’s success is due to factors that do not exist at similar levels anywhere else in the United States, particularly its very high population density along a linear corridor an- chored by the country’s largest city and extensive network of conventional rail, commuter and services that predates the development of high-speed rail. However, that does not

3 B4 U.S.C. EF36F()(B).

] mean that the NEC is the only U.S. corridor well suited for high-speed rail service. Rather, it helps to illustrate, as a prototype, the sorts of conditions that corridors in the U.S. will likely need to be successful –robust public transit connectivity, high-density land-use, significant populations, high driving and parking costs, significant congestion on other modes, economic agglomeration, and so forth.

So, while Amtrak strongly supports development of new high-speed corridors, we cannot focus only on the dream of funding and constructing a large number of them from scratch, which is not going to happen soon enough to meet the near term need for more passenger rail service, or take a chance that new technologies will eventually prove viable. The urgent economic and mobility needs of the nation require a more holistic approach that focuses on quickly improving and ex- panding our conventional network to serve more people and places with reliable service, completing the two high speed corridors already under development – the NEC and California High-Speed Rail – and launching select additional corridors with the right aFributes for high- speed development.

Such an approach, which focuses on creating reasonable alternatives to high-carbon transporta- tion modes in the near term, is essential to addressing climate change. As the CommiFee knows, the transportation sector accounts for the largest share – nearly ]S% -- of greenhouse gas emis- sions in the United States. The ambitious environmental goals the Biden Administration has proposed – particularly the kS% reduction in greenhouse gases by RS]S – cannot be realized if the only options for most intercity trips continue to be driving or flying. With new high-speed lines taking, on average, TQ years to progress from the start of construction to operation in Europe according to a RST^ report by the ’s European Court of Auditors,4 the United States simply does not have the time to wait on high-speed rail alone to increase intercity passen- ger rail use in America.

High Speed Rail in the Northeast Corridor Turning the Boston-to-Washington NEC into North America’s only high-speed railroad is per- haps Amtrak’s biggest accomplishment. When we acquired the NEC on April T, T\UQ, it was literally falling apart. Metroliners bounced over bumpy tracks at reduced speeds; service was in a downward spiral; and extensive slow orders due to lack of maintenance by the NEC’s owner, the bankrupt Penn Central, could have curtailed rail service were it not for an emergency appropriation in T\Uk that kept trains running until Amtrak took over.

Over the next five years, Amtrak rebuilt the NEC with funds provided by the Northeast Corridor Improvement Program (NECIP), reducing trip times, and ultimately increasing maximum speeds

4 hJps://op.europa.eu/webpub/eca/special-reports/high-speed-rail-34-E63?/en/

Y to TRk mph. In RSSS, funding appropriated for the Northeast High-Speed Rail Improvement Project (NHRIP) allowed us to extend electrification from New Haven to Boston and increase maximum speeds to TkS mph on that segment. Shortly thereafter, we introduced the high-speed trainsets that have been the flagship of our NEC services for the ensuing two decades. Their popularity has led to widespread usage of the term “Acela Corridor” to describe the megaregion they serve: a densely populated corridor that accounts for TU% of the U.S. population and RS% of the gross domestic product on which the NEC is the artery that provides mobility and drives the economy.

As a result of these investments, the NEC is a very different rail line today than it was in T\UQ. It is the busiest railroad corridor in the Western Hemisphere, hosting (pre-COVID) R,SSS passen- ger trains carrying approximately ^RS,SSS commuter and Amtrak passengers each weekday, along with approximately QS freight trains a day. Amtrak passengers made TU.T million trips on the NEC in FY RST\, accounting for over half of our total ridership. Today, the high speeds between Washington and are T]k mph and will soon rise to TQS mph, as will maximum speeds between New Haven and Boston. High-speed crossovers and bidirectional sig- nals allow trains to weave efficient paths across the railroad, protects operations, and trains achieve high levels of on-time performance far surpassing those on the rest of the Amtrak system.

Improved and higher speed service in the NEC has had a dramatic effect on Amtrak’s competi- tiveness with . As shown below, from RSSS to RST\ Amtrak’s share of the air-rail market between New York City and Washington increased from ]U% to U^%. Amtrak’s market share between New York City and Boston nearly tripled, increasing from RS% to kY%. Amtrak’s NEC ridership has, of course, decreased markedly during the pandemic: March ridership was down UQ% from FY RST\ levels. However, our share of the air-rail market has actually increased since the pandemic began. That trend is likely to continue if, as many observers expect, service in short-distance markets is not restored to pre-COVID-T\ levels.

k

Acela introduced

Acela introduced

Electrified Regional service introduced Q Despite COVID-T\, we are continuing to make major improvements in our NEC high-speed rail services.

§ The opening of the Moynihan Train Hall at New York City’s Penn Station at the end of last year has transformed our station facility in that city, which contributes nearly half of our nationwide ticket revenues, from a crowded subterranean chamber of daily commuter horrors into a spacious, modern, world-class station that is at last worthy of the great city it serves. Moynihan Train Hall gives new meaning to the phrase from last to first. § The R^ next generation Acela trainsets that will soon begin entering revenue service will expand the Acela fleet by YS% and increase the number of seats per train by Rk%. They will operate at higher speeds – a maximum of TQS mph – while offering improved ride quality, increased reliability, and modern contactless features. The new Acela trainsets have al- ready provided large benefits to our nation’s economy because they were bought in America: \k% of their components were produced in the United States by RkS suppliers in RU states. § We have just selected a preferred bidder to produce ^] Intercity Trainsets: dual mode trains capable of operating at TRk mph under electric power and continuing under diesel power to destinations beyond the NEC without the need for time consuming engine changes. They will replace the Yk-year-old Amfleet I cars operated on our trains and will also operate on many of our state-supported corridor routes. § Completion of the High-Speed Rail Improvement Program, which is replacing the electric traction infrastructure and overhead catenary wires installed in the T\]Ss, and upgrading track and signals, on a RY-mile stretch of the NEC between Trenton and New Brunswick, New Jersey, will allow the new Acela trainsets to operate over that segment at a maximum speed of TQS mph.

Because the NEC is a shared use facility, capital investments in the NEC have also provided major benefits to the commuter rail riders who account for over \S% of NEC rail travelers. The near doubling in the number of commuter trains operating over the NEC from T\UQ when Amtrak acquired it to RST\, particularly the enormous expansion of New Jersey Transit service and the in- crease in trains between Washington and on the MARC from two to ]T round trips each weekday, would not have been possible without the investments the fed- eral government has made to provide expanded capacity, increased reliability and higher speeds.

The Green Way to Travel The history of Amtrak’s ownership of the NEC demonstrates that, when Congress has provided funding to improve high-speed rail service, we have used it well on transformative projects that

U have produced enormous benefits. Importantly, those investments have led millions of passen- gers who would otherwise have driven or flown to take the train, making a major contribution to our environment.

Passenger rail service is the green way to travel, particularly on electrified rail lines like the NEC. We hear a lot of talk about other transportation modes adopting stretch goals to reduce their emissions, such as producing only electric cars by RS]k. On Amtrak’s NEC, we are already there. Since we completed electrification to Boston in the early RSSSs, all Amtrak trains operating be- tween Washington and Boston have utilized electric power. As a result, traveling on an Amtrak NEC train produces ^]% fewer emissions than driving, and U]% fewer emissions than flying. About a third of the NEC’s electric traction power is hydroelectric power generated in Safe , along the .

High-Speed Rail on Amtrak’s National Network The Acela trains account for only part of Amtrak’s high-speed operations. Northeast Regional trains, trains and other state-supported trains operate over the NEC at a maxi- mum speed of TRk mph. Passengers riding those trains between the NEC and destinations on state-supported routes travel at that speed for a portion of their trips, reducing their trip time. Long distance trains destined for , New Orleans, Georgia, and travel over the NEC at a maximum speed of TTS mph.

On four of the corridors on our National Network, all of which are operated, maintained, and owned in whole or part by Amtrak, we operate state-supported services which reach the TTS miles-per hour threshold for high-speed rail under the PRIIA definition. All these corri- dors benefited from improvements funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of RSS\ and/or the RSS\ and RSTS Transportation Appropriations Acts that provided over $TS bil- lion in funding for high-speed and intercity passenger rail development.

§ On the Amtrak-owned between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, the ini- tial phase of the Keystone Corridor Improvement Project (KCIP), a partnership between Amtrak and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania completed in RSSQ, restored electrified service, increased maximum speeds to TTS mph, increased service frequency and ex- tended most trains from Philadelphia to New York City. The result: \T% ridership growth from RSSQ to RST\. The KCIP project’s success, made possible because of Amtrak’s owner- ship of the corridor and its ability to mobilize its workforce to complete the project in a relatively short time, has been cited in studies published in the Harvard Business Review and the Mineta Institute as a model for cost-efficient improvements in existing intercity passenger rail services. With additional investments, maximum speeds

^ on the Keystone Corridor, the only electrified Amtrak route other than the NEC, could be increased to TRk mph. § On the \Q-mile Amtrak-owned portion of the Line between Porter, Indiana and Kalamazoo, Michigan that forms part of the route between Chicago and Detroit/Pontiac, speeds were increased to TTS mph in RSTR following the installation of the Interoperable Electronic Train Management System (I-ETMS), one of the first suc- cessful positive train control systems outside of the NEC. When, following completion of improvements constructed by Amtrak, speeds are increased on the T]k-mile segment of the Michigan Line between Kalamazoo and the Detroit area that Michigan acquired in RST], trains will be able to operate at TTS mph on approximately TQS of the R]T miles of the Michigan Line owned by Amtrak and Michigan. § Track and signal improvements on the QT-mile Amtrak-owned Springfield Line between New Haven and Springfield, MassachuseFs allowed speeds to be increased to TTS mph in RST^, and provided additional capacity that enabled Amtrak service to increase from six to nine weekday round trips and the initiation of CTrail commuter rail service. § Trains also operate at a maximum speed of TTS mph on the U\-mile portion of the Amtrak- leased, and partly Amtrak-owned, New York City-Albany/Schenectady between Poughkeepsie and Schenectady.

When you add up all the trains described above, over half of Amtrak’s trains operate at a maxi- mum speed of TSS mph or more over at least a portion of their route.

Amtrak is also working with Union Pacific Railroad, the Department of Transportation, and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to increase maximum speeds between Joliet and East St. Louis, Illinois on the Chicago to St. Louis route. We are seeking FRA approval of recently completed testing for \S mph operations, which we hope to implement within the next few months. Thereafter, additional testing will be conducted to obtain FRA ap- proval for TTS mph operations, which could commence within a year.

Why Doesn’t the U.S. Have More or Faster High-Speed Trains? One of the questions Amtrak is often asked is why the United States does not have faster or more high-speed trains like most European countries in corridors where that would make sense. The answer is simple: money. Unlike these countries, the United States has chosen to primarily invest in highways and aviation rather than rail.

From the mid-T\]Ss, when lightweight streamlined trains were introduced, until T\k\, the United States had the fastest trains in the world. Passenger trains serving corridors like Chicago

\ to , some pulled by steam locomotives, operated at speeds of \S-TSS mph. They of- fered frequent service, with trip times that would be competitive even with today’s driving times, on rail lines shared with freight trains.

In the T\kSs that began to change. As European countries and Japan started investing in improved and higher speed passenger rail service, the United States opted instead to build interstate high- ways and . The federal government’s decision to invest in cars and planes rather than passenger rail contributed significantly to the precipitous decline in intercity passenger rail ser- vice that resulted in the creation of Amtrak.

Today, the TkS mph maximum speed on Acela trains places the United States T^th in the world when countries are ranked based on their fastest trains. You get what you pay for – and in the United States the vast majority of federal transportation funding has gone to highways.

In recent years, an increasing share of highway funding has come directly from taxpayers rather than from highway users. As everyone familiar with federal transportation funding knows, failure to raise the federal gas tax since T\\Y caused the Highway Trust Fund to become insolvent in RSS^. Since then, the federal government has appropriated over $TkU billion to bail it out: nearly three times as much money, in just over a decade, as Amtrak has received over its entire kS-year existence.

By contrast, since RSTS, the only federal funding available for developing or improving intercity and high-speed passenger rail, other than Amtrak’s annual appropriation, has been small grants under several competitive matching grant programs such as the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements Program (CRISI) and the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) program (formerly known as BUILD and TIGER). The total funding appropriated for competitive grant programs for which passenger rail is eligible would not make a dent in the cost of constructing even a single high-speed rail line. Most of those programs are not limited to intercity passenger rail, and over the last four years highway projects have received the majority of the funding from programs for which they are eligible.

If highways were funded in the same way we fund passenger rail, we’d still be driving on dirt roads. If we are going to have improved intercity and high-speed rail in the United States, Congress must provide adequate, consistent, and reliable funding as it does through trust funds earmarked for other transportation modes.

What Do Successful High-Speed Rail Systems Around the World Have in Common? While international high-speed rail systems differ in many respects, an examination of the way successful systems have been developed reveals five nearly universal commonalities.

TS First, the national governments in all these countries have provided significant, consistent, and predictable funding for the development and construction of high-speed rail lines over an ex- tended period.

Second, nearly all these countries have followed an incremental approach to expanding high- speed rail service. They began by upgrading existing conventional speed rail lines for higher speeds; progressed to building dedicated high-speed rail segments along portions of routes; and over time extended their dedicated high-speed rail network along lengthy corridors on heav- ily traveled routes. The major exception is Japan, whose narrow-gauge rail lines through mountainous regions could not be upgraded for higher speeds. Even today, most European high- speed trains continue to share tracks with conventional rail services over at least portions of their routes, particularly in terminal areas in major cities.

Third, high-speed rail service in these countries does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, it is integrated with conventional speed intercity passenger rail service, often operating over the same tracks or as extensions of high-speed rail services, and seamlessly connected to , commuter rail and rail transit services, as well as airports.

Fourth, countries that have rapidly developed high-speed rail systems – most notably China – do not have environmental laws like those in the United States, or the same protections for private property owners’ rights. That allows high-speed rail lines to be built more quickly and at lesser expense. Six years of ultimately unsuccessful environmental litigation delayed construction of ’s yet-to-be-completed line to Orlando line, which was originally pro- jected to begin operations in RSTk. Environmental requirements, and the challenges of purchasing or condemning thousands of properties to create a new right-of-way, are major reasons the initial segment of California High Speed Rail is now projected to begin service more than two decades after voters approved funding for it. No one would suggest geFing rid of our environmental and property rights laws, but any realistic projection of the time required to build high-speed lines if funding suddenly became available must take those laws into account.

Finally, in nearly all the countries that have built successful high-speed rail systems, a national passenger rail operator has played a leading, and in most cases the lead, role in planning and de- veloping high-speed rail service. Examples include SNCF in France, Deutsche Bahn in Germany, Renfe in Spain, and JNR in Japan. In order to build a high-speed railroad, you need people with experience in planning, constructing, maintaining and operating high-speed rail lines, and you want to leverage this capacity so that you can support several projects efficiently, learn- ing valuable lessons as development progresses. In most countries (including the United States), most of those people work for the national passenger railroad, and this core capacity is utilized to drive network development.

TT What Can We Do to Transform High-Speed Rail on the NEC? The biggest challenge we face in improving existing high-speed rail service on the NEC is, of course, the age, condition, and capacity of key infrastructure assets, such as bridges, tunnels, and electric traction systems. The good news is that most of those assets were built to last TSS years. The bad news is that many of them are now more than TSS years old. They must be re- placed or rebuilt just to maintain existing service levels. Historical federal funding levels have been insufficient to address the NEC’s State of Good Repair backlog, let alone make the invest- ments required to increase speeds and track capacity for improved high-speed rail service.

The most important factor in achieving higher speeds on a rail route is not the maximum speed at which trains are able to operate, but rather minimizing places where trains must go slow. In many places along the NEC, all trains must operate at very slow speeds on infrastructure not capable of accommodating faster operations. The most prominent example is the curving, water- laden, TkS-year-old Baltimore & Potomac (B&P) Tunnel just south of Amtrak’s Baltimore station, through which trains crawl at ]S mph. The longest slow stretch is the kU-mile Metro-North Railroad segment of the NEC between New Rochelle, New York and New Haven, on which the maximum speed is only ^S mph. Slow speeds on the Metro-North segment are the major rea- son that Acela trip time between New York City and Boston is kT minutes longer than between New York City and Washington, even though the distances are nearly identical and the maximum speed between New York City and Boston (TkS mph) is faster than the T]k mph maximum be- tween New York City and Washington.

It also does no good to have an Acela train race up the Northeast Corridor from Washington at a maximum speed of T]k, or soon TQS, mph, only to come to a dead halt four miles from its New York City destination because trains in both directions are sharing the one single-track tun- nel under the Hudson River while the other undergoes stopgap repairs. The additional time that must be added to schedules to account for the likelihood of infrastructure-related delays affects on-time performance and necessitates longer scheduled trip times.

Fortunately, we have an opportunity to address this problem. With realistically achievable lev- els of federal funding for essential state-of-good repair investments and additional investments to increase speeds, we can significantly reduce trip times and improve existing NEC high- speed-rail service.

Amtrak has identified investments, collectively projected to cost approximately $kS billion, that would enable Acela trains to operate at TQS mph on approximately ]]] of the YkU miles between Washington and Boston and increase maximum speeds on the Metro-North segment to TRk mph. This would reduce trip times on express Acela trains to approximately two hours between New York City and Washington and two hours and ]S minutes between New York City

TR and Boston. Travel time between Washington and Boston would decrease by a full two hours, making Amtrak service much more competitive with flying. These investments would also pro- vide additional capacity that, in addition to enabling Amtrak to increase Acela service frequency to every half hour, would also benefit other Amtrak and commuter rail services.

The key infrastructure investments to increase speeds and capacity that could be accomplished if this level of funding were made available include:

§ Realigning curves, upgrading tracks and signals, and installing constant-tension catenary where it is not presently in place; § Minor bridge replacements, platform reconstruction and interlocking reconfigurations where required for higher speeds or to facilitate increases in service frequency; § Installation of additional track to provide a continuous four-to-six-track railroad along the Metro-North segment and a minimum of three tracks on the state-owned/Amtrak-op- erated portion of the NEC in MassachuseFs; § Construction of a new dedicated high-speed segment between Newport and Edgemoor, (Delaware New Segment); and § Construction of a new high-speed segment on new right-of-way between New Haven and Providence (Connecticut New Segment).

The projected costs of these improvements, and the trip time reductions they would produce, are shown in the table below.

SECTION -> WAS-NYP NYP-BOS NEC HSR HSR Trip Trip HSR Trip Phase Times Cost ($B) Times Cost ($B) Times* Total Cost ($B) Current NEC 2:49 3:40 6:29 NEC HSR Program 2:00 $12.0 2:28 $36.3 4:28 $48.3 *Full Corridor Trip Times exclude New York City station dwell The Connecticut New Segment accounts for $R\.k billion of the $]Q.] billion projected cost of the New York City to Boston improvements. Amtrak’s plan assumes it would run primarily within the Interstate \k right-of-way and include a new station in New London. While the pro- jected trip time improvements aFributable to construction of the new segment assumed its maximum speed would be TQS miles-per-hour, approximately ]^ miles could support up to T^Q mph operations, which could produce additional trip time reductions.

The projected $TR billion cost of the Washington to New York City improvements does not in- clude the cost of four not yet funded State of Good Repair projects: replacement of the B&P Tunnel and of the Susquehanna, Gunpowder and Bridges in . While some of these

T] projects, particularly the B&P Tunnel replacement, would increase speeds and contribute to the projected trip time reductions, replacement of these assets is necessary for reasons unre- lated to speed limitations.

What is most significant about these investments is the not the higher maximum speeds they would allow on hundreds of miles of track, but rather that they would increase average speeds to TT] mph between New York and Washington and \Y mph between New York and Boston, both in the same range as many European high-speed rail services. These investments could be constructed incrementally as funding and track time for construction became available, providing immediate benefits before completion of the entire project.

Going Further: Investments to Achieve Below Two-Hour New York to Washington Trip Times When President Biden spoke at our kSth anniversary celebration last Friday, he said that Amtrak’s vision shouldn’t be limited to reducing trip time from New York to Washington to two hours. Instead, he believes that our goal should be to operate RRS mph trains with a trip time of \S minutes.

Additional funding beyond the $kS billion scope described above would advance this goal by al- lowing Amtrak to begin constructing dedicated high-speed rail tracks on new alignments. The Selected Alternative in the NEC Future Plan discussed below includes the construction of five new segments, in addition to the Delaware New Segment included in Amtrak’s proposed investments, between Washington and New York City. They are:

§ Bayview (Baltimore) to Newark, Delaware § Philadelphia International Airport § Baldwin, Pennsylvania to Philadelphia § Philadelphia to Bridesburg, Pennsylvania § North Brunswick to Secaucus, New Jersey

The new segments would be designed for RRS mph operation. While they would be connected to the existing NEC tracks at endpoints, the new segments would be located almost entirely out- side of the existing NEC right-of-way. This means that their construction would have liFle impact on current NEC operations, allowing it to proceed in tandem with upgrading of existing NEC tracks that requires track outages that must be limited in order to avoid severe disruptions and delays to train operations.

Trains could begin utilizing each new segment as it was completed. Once a significant portion of the new segment mileage has been constructed, additional high-speed trainsets capable of higher speed operation could be acquired and the maximum speed on the new segments in- creased to RRS mph, equivalent to the fastest high-speed lines around the world.

TY Amtrak’s Proposed Investments and the NEC Future Plan In RSTU, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) completed a more than five-year, compre- hensive planning and Tier I assessment of environmental impacts known as NEC Future that defined, evaluated, and prioritized future investments in the NEC. All the investments Amtrak has identified above are included within the Selected Alternative the FRA chose in the Record of Decision. (The Selected Alternative includes additional capacity between New Haven and Providence but does not specify how it will be provided pending further study.)

In addition to establishing a prioritized plan for future investments, NEC Future’s Record of Decision also provides programmatic level (Tier T) environmental clearances. This will enable projects included in the Selected Alternative to proceed directly to site-specific, project-level en- vironmental reviews, greatly shortening the environmental review process compared to corridors for which corridor-wide programmatic environmental analyses have not yet taken place.

Amtrak is aware of proposals to discard the Selective Alternative that FRA has chosen for the route of New York City to Boston service, which is along the existing NEC right-of-way except for the New Haven-to-Providence segment, in favor of an alternative route across (the Long Island Alignment) that FRA considered and rejected because of its signifi- negative environmental and community impacts. The rejected Long Island Alignment would, among other things, require the construction of new tunnels under the East River; build- ing a new high-speed rail line from Long Island City to Ronkonkoma, New York through densely populated urban communities; the construction of a long, deep tunnel under the environmentally fragile Long Island Sound; and construction of a new high-speed rail line through communities between Hartford and Boston. Needless to say, the environmental and impacts and enormous costs of this alternative make it highly unlikely that it would ever be constructed even if it had been selected. Giving it further consideration would serve no purpose other than to delay com- mencement of urgently improvements on the Metro-North segment between New Rochelle, New York and New Haven, the slowest portion of the NEC.

What Is Amtrak’s Role in Advancing High-Speed Rail Outside of the NEC? When Congress created Amtrak in T\US to revitalize passenger rail service, a major component of its vision was that Amtrak would develop expanded and higher speed passenger rail service. A half century later, only a small part of that vision has been realized. The main reason, as I noted above, is money. However, a lack of national direction and stable leadership in developing and advancing a plan for a national network of connected intercity and high-speed rail routes has also played a role.

It is time to return to Congress’s original vision of having Amtrak play a lead role in the devel- opment of expanded intercity and high-speed rail service – and this time provide the funding

Tk to enable that to happen. Amtrak brings a great deal of value to the table. Amtrak is the operator of the only high-speed rail service in the United States today, and the only U.S. company that has maintained and constructed operational high-speed rail lines. We have more than Yk years of ex- perience in complying with the unique U.S. safety regulations for high-speed rail track and equipment. The majority of our approximately TU,SSS employees are involved, directly or in- directly, in the operation of high-speed rail services, including most of our train and engine employees (conductors and engineers). Many of these employees have unique skills not pos- sessed by other U.S. workers in areas such as construction and maintenance of electric traction infrastructure and planning high-speed rail operations and equipment acquisition. We are also the only U.S. company with high-speed rail training programs.

Amtrak also possesses unique access rights, administered by the Surface Transportation Board (STB), over all other freight and passenger rail carriers’ rail lines and other facilities. While very high-speed rail services may require dedicated tracks, frequent, higher-speed passenger rail ser- vices are compatible with freight operations and are an essential component of any high-speed rail development effort to avoid the extraordinary costs and environmental impacts of building new, dedicated high-speed rail lines where they are not necessary. Amtrak trains on the NEC operate up to TkS, soon to be TQS mph on tracks shared with freight trains, and freight trains operate over nearly all of the Amtrak rail lines elsewhere on which the maximum passenger train speed is TTS mph.

Given the high expense of high-speed rail infrastructure, which on average was found to cost $]S million per kilometer (excluding more expensive tunneling projects) with more recent pro- jects exceeding $Y^ million per kilometer in Europe by the RST^ European Union audit, maximizing the utility of the conventional network and focusing new alignment, high-speed seg- ment construction on the highest impact, most-critical segments is imperative to properly conserve financial resources.

There are many different ways for Amtrak to participate in and bring value to proposed high- speed rail services like those whose representatives are also appearing before you today.

§ Amtrak was part of one of the international teams that bid to be the Early Train Operator for California High-Speed Rail. § We have consulting and joint ticketing agreements with Texas Central. The joint ticketing agreement will allow passengers to make reservations through Amtrak’s website, app and other distribution channels for trips involving travel on both Amtrak trains and Texas Central’s planned high-speed rail line between and Houston, and provide seamless connections between the Amtrak and Texas Central stations.

TQ § We have also recently entered into an agreement with the Commonwealth of Virginia under which we will contribute capital funding to Virginia’s planned upgrades along the fast-growing Washington-to-Richmond segment of the Southeast High-Speed Rail Corridor This will allow significant increases in Amtrak service frequency and set the stage for extension of Amtrak service over a newly constructed, dedicated high-speed rail line between Petersburg, Virginia and Raleigh.

We would welcome the opportunity to develop a joint-ticketing agreement with Brightline, whose proposed extension from the Orlando Airport to Disney World would operate along the same rail corridor as Amtrak’s New York-to-Miami Silver Service long-distance trains, with which it could connect. However, existing federal law creates a major impediment to estab- lishing connections between Amtrak trains and railroads like Brightline that the STB deems to be “intrastate.” Those railroads are not subject to the STB’s jurisdiction, and therefore do not have to pay Railroad Retirement or Railroad Unemployment Taxes for their employees, as long as they do not connect with Amtrak.

Discouraging connections between other passenger railroads and Amtrak’s National Network makes no sense. Nor does treating some passenger railroads that operate over the interstate rail network, seek federal grants, and utilize federal tax advantaged financing differently from the rest of the railroad industry makes no sense. Congress should eliminate this loophole to encourage connectivity and create a level playing field for all passenger rail operators. Like- wise, federal laws should be amended to ensure that foreign rail operators, most of which are government-owned, that wish to operate high-speed rail or other passenger rail services in the United States are allowed to do so only if their countries extend the same right, on equal terms, to American railroads.

Finally, if the federal government is going to invest in private developers of high-speed rail sys- tems, Amtrak, as the federally-owned intercity rail operator, should be the vehicle for this investment. Amtrak, with five decades of marketing and sales experience, is ready to help vali- date high-speed rail development schemes and ridership and revenue estimates, assist with planning and design for infrastructure and operations, invest in projects and form joint ven- tures, provide experienced union labor, and ensure that new lines or segments are properly integrated into Amtrak’s National Network so that these investments create value far beyond the project limits.

TU Amtrak Connects US Provides a Blueprint for Near Term Expansion The Amtrak Connects US proposal that Amtrak has recently unveiled5 sets the stage for improve- ment of intercity passenger rail service throughout the United States – not just along a few isolated corridors. The product of nearly three years of planning and consultation with stakeholders, Amtrak Connects US embodies a carefully considered vision for expanded and improved inter- city passenger rail service. By adding up to ]S plus new routes and increasing service on up to RS plus existing routes over the next Tk years, it would aFract RS million more riders annually

Amtrak Connects US would bring new or additional passenger rail service to YU of the kS largest urban areas. It would provide Amtrak services with multiple daily frequencies to Tk states that lack such service today, including many of the largest, fastest growing and most diverse states such as Florida, Texas, and Georgia. The only Amtrak service these Tk states currently receive is provided by trains that run just once a day, and in many cases pass through the state in the mid- dle of the night.

Amtrak Connects US presents numerous opportunities for additional federal investments, and for partnering with states, cities and proposed non-Amtrak high-speed rail services that do advance. It is a realistic, achievable, and scalable plan that can be developed incrementally, and incorporate high-/higher-speed service where demand warrants and funding permits. Many of the routes it identifies for new or expanded service, including Portland to , British Columbia; Miami to Tampa; Chicago to Indianapolis; Petersburg, Virginia to Raleigh; New York City to Scranton; and Los Angeles to Phoenix have segments that would be good can- didates for near term TTS mph service.

The importance of having a plan shaped by vision but not fantasy is underscored by the history of the federally-designated High-Speed Rail Network. In T\\T, Congress directed the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) to designate corridors on which trains were reasonably expected to reach speeds of \S mph or more that would be eligible for authorized federal high- speed rail funding. Since then, Congress and USDOT have designated \,RSS miles of high-speed rail corridors in addition to the NEC. However, the funding required to develop high-speed rail on these corridors has never been appropriated. Thirty years later, trains operate at \S mph or higher on only RUU of those \,RSS miles. More than a third – ],YT] miles – of the federally- designated high-speed network is served only by Long Distance trains, and T,kSS miles have no intercity passenger rail service at all.

5 hJps://www.amtrakconnectsus.com/vision/

T^ New Technologies Are Not a Substitute for High-Speed and Conventional Passenger Rail While new technologies like and may capture the public imagination, they are not a substitute for high-speed and intercity passenger rail. They would serve only a small niche of the intercity travel market at a much higher cost – both financially and environmentally.

Maglev is not really a new technology. The first high-speed Maglev carrying revenue passengers opened in Germany in T\^Y, and a T\-mile Maglev line serving Shanghai’s airport has operated in China since RSS]. However, countries that have considered building a Maglev system – China, Japan and Germany – have opted to build high-speed rail lines instead in every case where that was a viable alternative because constructing a Maglev line is much more expensive than building a new high-speed rail line, and vastly more costly than upgrading an existing rail line for higher speeds.

Construction of a Maglev line through heavily populated areas would also be much more envi- ronmentally disruptive than developing or improving high-speed rail along an existing rail corridor. are also not as energy efficient as Amtrak trains. The energy consumption of the proposed Washington-to-Baltimore Maglev that FRA has calculated is twice as high per passenger mile as the energy consumed by an Amtrak NEC train. FRA has concluded that build- ing that Maglev line would increase energy consumption by ].S trillion BTUs annually.

In addition, the huge public expenditures required to construct a Maglev line would benefit only a small number of affluent travelers. Unlike passenger rail, Maglev is a point-to-point system that serves few or no intermediate stops and cannot share tracks with or easily connect with other services. Very few Amtrak NEC or MARC commuter rail passengers would be able to use, and even fewer could afford to use, the proposed Washington-Baltimore Maglev.

Less than ]% of Amtrak’s NEC passengers travel between the three places – Washington, Baltimore, and BWI Airport – the proposed Washington-to-Baltimore Maglev would serve. Even for them, using Maglev would save only a few minutes of travel time. Maglev’s projected trip time from Washington to Baltimore would be only Tk minutes faster than an Acela train today, and just six minutes faster than the projected Acela trip time following replacement of the B&P Tunnel and completion of the other investments discussed above. Based on Maglev’s average , a daily commute from Washington to Baltimore that costs $TQ on MARC would cost $TRS on Maglev. For less than half the projected cost of constructing a Washington-Baltimore Maglev, the parallel NEC could be transformed into a modern four-track railroad, providing significantly improved capacity, reliability and speeds for both MARC and Amtrak passengers from all economic strata.

Unlike Maglev, Hyperloop is a new unproven technology. No one has traveled in a Hyperloop, let alone at high speeds, other than company employees on short test tracks. If prove to be technologically feasible and safe, and are able to gain public acceptance, they would have the same limitations as Maglev.

T\ Conclusion President Biden’s American Jobs Plan is an important first step in developing a high-speed and conventional passenger rail system in the United States that would enhance mobility, gener- ate significant economic benefits, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The potential for high- speed rail in the right markets in the United States is indeed unlimited – and largely untapped.

We urge Congress to support the President’s proposal; to provide the levels of funding Amtrak has requested in its Legislative & Grant Request; and to enact Amtrak’s proposals for reauthori- zation. Most importantly, we urge Congress to provide adequate, assured and long-term funding for intercity passenger rail service, such as the trust funds it established decades ago for other transportation modes, and that has been the key to the development of high-speed rail services in every other nation.

I thank you for your time today and for your support for Amtrak. I invite you to join with President Biden, Amtrak’s employees and stakeholders, and me in celebrating what we have accomplished during our first half century, and in realizing in the years ahead Congress’s T\US vision that Amtrak provide “fast and comfortable transportation” in every region of the United States.

RS